What rout? Wall Street this week erased all of the losses from its nightmare start to August, cueing jokes about summertime truly being better spent at the beach than following market dramas too closely. Yet even during the sell-off there was one group who held their nerve, whether sporting sunglasses or their screen-reading specs, and those were retail investors.

Mom-and-pop traders are usually thought of as the last to join an investing bandwagon, meaning they should be the first to freak out when, having bought near the top, their profits are threatened by any market wobble. As smaller investors have become a greater share of daily trading in recent years, encouraged by online-focused platforms such as Robinhood and Interactive Brokers, their behaviour matters more for the wider market, too. 

So should their recent resolve be considered an example of steeliness, or a risky confidence that pays off only up to the point where it goes wrong?